


wherever you go today

by brella



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Genre: Character Study, Chromatic Source, Gen, Pre-Canon, Yuletide 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 17:39:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2820650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pipit grows up hungering for adventure and open skies, but things change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wherever you go today

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trickybonmot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trickybonmot/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I nabbed this on pinch hit, so I'm sorry I couldn't do more with it. I also couldn't dig up your Yuletide letter due to my terrible navigation skills, so I'm so so SO sorry if I skimped on something you would have liked. I do know that you like Pipit, so I tried to roll with that! 
> 
> Title is from ["Mykonos" by Fleet Foxes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT-dxG4WWf4).

“Pipit,” asks Karane, seven years old, auburn hair sticking awkwardly out the back of her head in a ponytail, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Pipit contemplates it for a moment, leaning back on his palms in the grass, and feels the wind tousle his hair, racing further and further north.

“The greatest hero there ever was!” he declares, lifting his fists in the air.

 

 

* * *

 

 

For all of the stories that enchanted Pipit in his childhood, nothing had ever seemed more magnificent than Skyloft itself. Up there—up _here_ —there are clouds and wind and horizons just out of reach, and the endless expanse of white below seems like a whispering ocean, swallowing up time in its empyrean tide and never bringing it back again.

His mother, laughing blithely as she flutters aimlessly around the dusty house, tells him nearly every day that he must have inherited his “insatiable hunger for adventure” from his father, whose “insatiable hunger for adventure” had been directly responsible for the fatal fall he’d taken from his Loftwing during a storm near the Thunderhead. Pipit wishes she wouldn’t mention it. He knows that his father did more than die tragically, but that’s all he ever hears about.

He won’t mince words—he had originally enrolled in the Knight Academy for the same reason as nearly everyone else who does: because he’d wanted to do something great. Not necessarily good, not at that brash age, but great, certainly. Headmaster Gaepora had given a very involved speech to Pipit’s freshman class, but Pipit had not heard any of it; his mind had been filled, leaping and sprinting, with visions of monster-slaying and thrill-seeking, protecting the citizens of Skyloft from the forces of darkness (whatever those might be; he had never seen one). It had thrilled him from the time he’d been a child, imagining all of the legendary things he would do once he was old enough to replace his mother’s fragmented memories of his father with something better, something she could tell people about _without_ crying.

She does cry when he meets his Loftwing, but she’s smiling through it, and the bags under her eyes don’t seem as heavy.

“Just you wait,” he tells her, stroking the bird’s bright plumage and grinning. “I’m going to fly off the edge of the world and then bring back treasures and strange creatures and—”

“Oh, no, dear, don’t say such things,” his mother admonishes him. Her smile seems wearier, now. “There’s nothing to be found out there, nothing at all. You’re needed here so much more.”

Pipit wrinkles his nose. _Him_? Needed in _Skyloft_ , of all places? The idyllic set of sky islands was protected by the goddess day after day, century after century, and it had to have come from _somewhere_ , and all he wants to do is discover where that somewhere is. Maybe his father is there, lost and befuddled but oh, such a grand adventurer.

“Don’t make faces, Pipit,” Karane scolds him, whacking him in the shoulder. “It’s serious. She’s _serious_. We’re sworn to protect Skyloft above all else.”

Karane had become so stern from the very first day at the Knight Academy. Pipit had struggled with understanding, at first, why his normally free-spirited friend had decided to become a serious studier almost overnight, but he thinks he might get it now. It isn’t easy to be a worthy knight, not when the only thing you can do to prove yourself is fly your Loftwing to strange places and catch people stupid enough to walk off the edge of the island. That doesn’t require _bravery_ or anything; you just need to have good timing.

“Sorry,” he says, going back to grinning instead.

Karane hits his shoulder again. “No, you’re not.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

He’s a little bit surprised at the things he’s taught during that first year at the Academy. Not anything like how to deal a fatal blow to an opponent, or how to navigate the wilderness without a map, or how to save the world, or what the best places are to have adventures. At first, it annoys him—all this talk of strength of heart and how important it is to be kind even when times are troubling, and how a knight’s greatest virtues are patience, understanding, and compassion, rather than strength, nerve, cleverness, and chivalry.

Because strength, nerve, cleverness, and chivalry had always been his greatest skills in life. He had grown up defending the innocent from bullies, climbing tall and precarious trees to rescue trapped Remlits, coming home with black eyes and wearing them as trophies rather than wounds. Pipit is good at _everything_ demonstrative—but kindness? Patience? He can’t recall the last time those had ever even entered his consciousness.

“You’re a perfectly kind person,” Karane tells him stoutly. “All you ever do is help people.”

“By getting into fights and falling down, sure,” Pipit says. He blows at a handful of grass he’d pulled out of the earth until it’s carried away. “I always thought by this time I’d have been in at least _one_ dashing swordfight, you know? Like in the stories.”

“You know why we have those stories, Pip?” Karane asks, finally setting down her tome of a book and turning to fix him with a critical stare.

He shrugs, smiling guilelessly at her. “Because they’re exciting?”

“No,” Karane explains. She folds her hands in her lap, frowning at the ground as though it will hold the words she seems to be struggling to conjure up. “It’s because we need to remember how bad things used to be—how bad they can _get_. All of those wars and things—those may be the reason we got knights at first, and all, but we don’t have wars anymore. We only have each other. And we need to protect each other, and help each other, without asking anything in return; we need to love and care and _be there_ for each other. Forgetting those things is what made the war happen in the first place.”

Pipit’s teasing grin had faded from his face with every word she spoke. Something settled, heavy and sure, in the center of him, and it made him feel warm.

“You must think about this a lot, huh?” he asks after a while, a bit mischievously.

Karane’s cheeks turn red with indignation. “Something funny about that? Stories aren’t enough for _all_ of us, Pipit. Maybe it’s time they stopped being enough for you.”

And Pipit doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he sits there in silence and gazes out at the sky and the sea of clouds, staying like that long after Karane has gathered her books and left with a quiet mutter of good-bye. He watches the Loftwings arc and soar, playful, unbridled. He watches the people of Skyloft pass, chatting and laughing and talking in somber tones about last week’s storm and how Rupin is charging too much for bombs again.

It gets dark without his notice. Snapping into awareness, he stands quickly and departs for his house, dashing past a snarling Keese on the way.

“Ah, home late!” his mother exclaims when he slams the door shut behind him just in time to hear the Keese crash into it. “My, my. What was that?”

“Nothing, Mother,” Pipit says. He frowns at the dirty state of the house, feeling his stomach flip unpleasantly. Headmaster Gaepora is kind enough to let him board at the Academy with the other students in exchange for assisting Instructor Horwell (the money his father had left behind is barely enough to cover his education, but enough to start), but guilt propels him home every now and then. “Should I clean up a bit?”

“No, no, don’t worry about it!” his mother exclaims with a casual wave of her hands. “Did you bring anything for dinner?”

Pipit bites his lip, feeling his stomach roar, and thinks of that Keese outside. His hand finds the doorknob. “N-No, I… I’ll go out and find something.”

He doesn’t kill the Keese. The thought makes him feel inexplicably sick. Instead, he sneaks onto his Loftwing and manages to take to the sky, heading for the Lumpy Pumpkin, and convinces Pumm after a great deal of begging to let him take home a container of soup and pay for it later.

“You shouldn’t be out so late, Pipit,” Kina scolds him on his way out. “Won’t your mother be worried?”

Pipit forces his best cheerful smile. “It’s my fault we didn’t have dinner ready tonight anyway. Thank you for your kindness! And you just let me know if you ever need _anything_ , all right? That's what I'm here for!”

“I worry about that boy,” Pumm grumbles with folded arms after Pipit has gone.

Kina tugs at her lower lip slightly, one hand braced under her elbow. “You want to know something funny? I don’t. Not even a bit.” She smiles warmly at the door. “He’s going to be the best knight we’ve ever had; he just doesn’t know it yet.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Pipit volunteers with enthusiasm as the student ambassador when the Knight Academy’s latest set of first-years arrive. Among them are Gaepora’s daughter, Zelda, whose blonde tresses are pulled back by a red kerchief, and her typical partner in crime, Link, whose hair is as messy as ever; a barrel-chested boy with an absurd red hairdo is there, too—Groose, Pipit thinks is his name, not that he leaves anyone in Skyloft much room to forget it—flanked by a pair of troublemakers called Cawlin and Strich. At the very back is a shy and gentle-looking boy (Fledge, Pipit thinks) with his hands folded in front of him, glancing periodically at Link and Zelda and back to Pipit.

“You have any questions at all, just let me know!” he says to the room after Gaepora and Owlan and Horwell have finished talking, setting his arms akimbo and his feet apart. “Ol’ Pipit’s here to help you with anything you need! We’re thrilled to have you aboard here at Knight Academy.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Link glance at Zelda and make some motions with his hands, grinning. Zelda nods enthusiastically before her arm shoots up in the air.

“Yes?” Pipit asks.

“Link wants to know why you decided to become a knight,” Zelda tells him brightly. She glances to Link as if for confirmation, and he bobs his head energetically before turning his wide blue eyes to Pipit.

Pipit blinks at the fresh-faced knights-to-be before him, clearing his throat as if it will bring him an easy answer. Groose yawns. Cawlin and Strich chuckle meanly to themselves. Zelda and Link, however, don’t break their admiring stares from Pipit, waiting eagerly for his response.

“W-Well, I…” He scratches his head, and he swears, _swears_ that he hears Instructor Owlan stifle a good-natured laugh. No—it couldn’t be. “My reasons have changed over the years, truth be told.”

“Oh, really?” Zelda perks up at that, brightening. “What are they?”

Pipit clears his throat again before lifting a hand to grasp his chin pensively. He doesn’t want to start _rambling_ to these new students; that would set a bad example, as knights should be eloquent, and there’s only a little bit of time left in the orientation anyway—but he doesn’t want to give a vague and insincere answer, either.

His mind rushes back to the day before, when he’d bandaged a crying Gully’s knee, and the day before that, when he’d brought Kukiel home to the fretful Wryna and Jakamar. Something warm had seemed to come out of them when they had remembered to smile again, when they had thanked him, and it had spread all the way to his fingers and toes until he’d been sure that he could float all the way home. He had been unconcerned with his mother’s cleanliness habits, and his father’s ghost, and the lack of Rupees in his pocket, and the charges for the coming semester. He had felt only pride.

Perhaps his greatest adventure has always been right here.

“If I were to put it simply,” he tells them after a great deal of thought, “I’d say it was because I… wanted to make people smile. The comfort and happiness of the people I protect—that’s all I’ll ever need.”

Groose and his cronies make no efforts to hide their derisive guffaws at that, but both Link and Zelda beam up at him, eyes full-up with open skies and all of the bright and beautiful things to come. Even Fledge seems a bit cheerier. 

Link nudges Zelda and nods happily at her. She giggles, then turns to Pipit again.

“Link likes that,” she says. “And I do, too!” She clasps her hands at her chest, eyes scrunching shut with merriment. “Thank you, Sir Pipit!”

Perhaps to punctuate it, Link salutes him. And truthfully, to Pipit, whose chest swells up with sentiment and contentment, no swashbuckling legend could ever measure up to those four simple words.

He doesn't fly so far from home anymore. 


End file.
